


Auctioneer

by Pride_of_Six



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Human, Auctions, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 05:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12742227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pride_of_Six/pseuds/Pride_of_Six
Summary: “Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” Stiles begins, “We’ve had a lot of success today, and I am sad to say that the auction is coming to a close… but we do have one final item to be auctioned off…” Derek sighs in relief, because even if it is just prolonging the inevitable, he needs all the time he can get to hype himself up to actually declare to one of his best friends that he’s in love with them—has been in love with them for years—and wants to go on romantic, sappy dates with them every day. “Me!”“Derek, you should totally buy him,” Laura urges him, slapping at his arm excitedly with a wild grin lighting up her face, “Oh my god, imagine that: your first date together and you paid him for it!”AKA Stiles is doing a fundraising auction for his cafe and Derek pines.





	Auctioneer

“Going once… twice… sold!” the announcer called. His distractingly long fingers threaded through the hand of the strawberry blonde haired goddess that had just sold for two thousand freaking dollars. For one date. At a fundraising auction. Derek had never seen anything like it. “To the wonderful philanthropist in the charcoal-grey suit!”

There was a smattering of polite claps as the announcer walked her over to the man and then handed him the symbolic white rose with the name ‘Lydia’ dangling from it on a tag.

“Up next we have quite the specimen…”

“Laura, please calm down,” Derek asked, no, begged, his sister in hushed tones as the next ‘item’ was introduced. His sister was absolutely insufferable when she got like this, buzzing with excitement. He knew for a fact that she wasn’t even interested in any of the staff members that were being ‘sold’ to fundraise for the opening of Stiles’ café.

“But Derek, this is so exciting!” she said it with such vehemence that Derek almost let himself believe it. Almost. “I mean, you’ve finally worked up the courage to ask him out. This is a big day!”

Derek shushed her urgently and then whipped his head around as if she’d just breached confidentiality and he was checking for any corporate spies lurking about. Fortunately, all of the other patrons were completely enamoured by Stiles talking up Scott like he was some prized stallion. Derek can’t really blame them, though, because he’s completely enamoured by Stiles ninety percent of the time as well.

“Relax, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Laura assures him but Derek hates it. Hates that everyone else seems so incredibly confident in him that it makes him feel like he shouldn’t be worrying when he inevitably always does. “He’s going to explode when you ask him.”

Yeah, perhaps he will, but only if Derek doesn’t explode before he gets the chance. At this point all he could do was wait and angst and mull over the words he’s been preparing for what feels like years now while they wait for the auction to be over.

Up on the stage, Stiles has grabbed onto one of Scott’s legs and is holding it up like a piece of meat. “Check out this hunky leg!” Derek rolls his eyes to the ceiling and somewhere deep, deep within him, he’s asking the universe why Stiles never calls _his_ legs hunky. They’re hunky as hell. “Alright, so let’s start the bidding at say… fifty dollars.”

“One hundred,” Derek calls. 

He’s been the first to bid on pretty much every person so far, even if he never raises another bet. It’s just for that split-second of a moment when Stiles points directly at him with his beaming smile and says: “We have one hundred!”

“Two hundred!” somebody else raises—it’s a woman to his right that’s been aggressively betting since the start but has yet to actually win. Then Stiles’ eyes are off of Derek and onto her. Then the next person, then the next. It’s a flurry of people wanting to get a piece of Scott and Derek snickers just a little bit at the look of glee on the pair of their faces. Stiles has probably made more money today than he’d originally predicted to help get his business off the ground. If Derek knows Stiles—and Derek does know Stiles alarmingly well—he’ll end up donating most of it to some charity or giving it to his employees as a bonus. He’s just such an amazingly great guy that it’s no wonder Derek’s found himself so smitten with him.

“Scott was the last one in the line-up for the auction, Derek,” Laura sing-songs into his ear as Scott’s bets break the one thousand barrier. “That means that in just a few short minutes you’ll finally have your moment that you’ve always dreamed of.”

She’s making ridiculous kissy faces at him and Derek scoffs, appalled, “I have not—”

But she levels him with a look heavy with epic proportions of daring and Derek just hangs his head in shame.

“Well alright, maybe I have.”

“Once… twice… sold! To the man with the curly hair!” Stiles is clapping and whooping himself as Scott walks himself into the crowd to a man that would pay over a thousand dollars to have one date with him. Not that Derek was expecting Stiles’ fundraiser to be a complete disaster, but even he’s a bit surprised by the number of people that have turned up with money to burn. It makes Derek feel all warm inside knowing that Stiles’ dream is really coming true.

“God, Laura,” Derek whispers urgently as the applause begins to die down, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it. It’s just so…” he gestured vaguely at nothing and then his stomach because, hello, there is a butterfly problem inside of him that needs to go away pronto if he doesn’t want to throw up all over Stiles during his big declaration of love.

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” Stiles begins, “We’ve had a lot of success today, and I am sad to say that the auction is coming to a close…” there’s obligatory noises of disappointment from the crowd, “but we do have one final item to be auctioned off…” Derek sighs in relief, because even if it is just prolonging the inevitable, he needs all the time he can get to hype himself up to actually declare to one of his best friends that he’s in love with them—has been in love with them for years—and wants to go on romantic, sappy dates with them every day. “Me!”

Laura had warned him earlier about potential volatility and combustion when he revealed his feelings to Stiles, but now he knows that she needn’t have worried because Derek’s brain detonates as if triggered by Stiles’ dramatic reveal of himself as the final item in the auction. And it’s terrible, because Derek had prepared seemingly every greeting, question and response that would entail his long-overdue declaration of love; but all of them had relied on rounding on Stiles immediately after the auction. What the hell was he going to do now that he was selling himself to someone else to spend the afternoon with? Stiles would hate his guts if he invited himself along to Stiles and his fundraiser’s date.

In the crowd, Lydia wolf-whistles from where she’s hugged up against the loaded dude that bought her for the afternoon.

“Derek, you should totally buy him,” Laura urges him, slapping at his arm excitedly with a wild grin lighting up her face, “Oh my god, imagine that: your first date together and you paid him for it!”

“Laura,” he grits out through his teeth and refocusses his attention to Stiles as he awkwardly fumbles to compliment himself.

“So I’m Stiles, Stiles Stilinski. It’s a weird name, I know, but believe it or not it’s less weird than my real one.” Derek sees as Scott turns to curly-haired guy and whispers Stiles’ real first name, butchering its pronunciation. Well, Derek can proudly say that he interrogated his Polish second cousin and can say it with perfect enunciation. “I’m also the owner of this joint, in case the name ‘Stiles’ Café’ didn’t tip you off,” appropriate chuckling, “and while I don’t have too many big selling points, I do now come with the bonus of all the money you guys have thrown at me today, so there’s that.” There’s some more laughter at that, and Derek wants nothing more than to stand up, walk right up to Stiles and smother him with his love. ‘I don’t have too many big selling points,’ he says, but Derek could, and would, spend every penny he had for even a glimpse of Stiles’ smile. “So how about we start the bidding off at… ten dollars!”

Derek snorts because Stiles can’t seriously think he’s only worth ten dollars. “One hundred!” Derek calls out, fondly, because he’s bet the same amount on every person so far, but this is the first time that he’s actually been interested in what’s being sold. An afternoon alone with Stiles doing romantic things together, even for the sake of a fundraiser, might just be enough to kill Derek. His heart would probably stop just from having Stiles walk over and hand him a white rose that entitled Derek to a date with him.

“We have one hundred!” Stiles calls, and he’s got a surprised kind of expression on his face now as he points excitedly at Derek. As if he wasn’t expecting Derek to bet on him even after he’d made a point to bet on everyone. Silly Stiles.

Then, silence.

It stretches, and it just becomes more and more awkward the longer that Stiles stands up there, a dawning look of horror on his face as nobody bets on him. Derek feels like there must be something he’s missing here, because what the hell are these people thinking if they’re willing to fork out thousands of dollars for a date with someone but they won’t take Stiles?

Across the floor, Scott has whipped out his wallet and is rapidly counting loose notes and coins. The curly-haired guy is also contributing, but it seems like he spent most of what he had on Scott. Stiles’ face goes red and his excitement gets inverted to embarrassment and Derek’s heart just breaks. Maybe he’d been getting cocky since so many people were paying big money and just thought he could get that little bit extra, and now it’d backfired so spectacularly.

“Uh, going once…” Stiles sounds so mortified and subdued, and Derek doesn’t want to go on a date with a sad, embarrassed Stiles. He wants to go on a date with the enthusiastic, hilarious Stiles that he loves. There’s what sounds like defeat in his voice as he continues, “going twice…”

“Five hundred dollars!” someone shouts, and Derek stands up. It takes him a moment to realise that hell, it was himself that had said it. He just raised his own bid like an idiot. People begin to murmur with confusion, and Stiles’ face, if possible, has become even more pained. Beside him, Laura is covering her face with her hands but he can still see her ridiculous smile peeking through her fingers.

“Uh, well okay,” Stiles looks puzzled, but at least it’s better than looking like he’s about to cry. “Going once…”

“A thousand!” He raises again, still standing, and he can see a flicker of a smile crack on Stiles’ features. Perhaps this was all some kind of ploy for them to get their hands on some of Derek’s money, but as soon as Derek sees that smile making an appearance he can’t stop himself. “Two!” Lydia gasps audibly like she’s scandalised that somebody is willing to pay Stiles the same amount of money for a date that someone was willing to pay her. Derek slams his hands down on the table and it shakes and maybe splinters a little bit, but Derek is pretty much paying for it at this point too. “Five thousand dollars!” he roars the words out, his chest heaving like he’s run a marathon, and hell it feels like he has. Laura’s head is on the table now, and it appears that she’s cry-laughing against the wood. The other patrons and staff at the café are all completely bewildered. Most importantly, though, Stiles isn’t sad anymore, in-fact he’s laughing out loud in a hyena’s cackle like Derek throwing money at him is the funniest thing to ever happen. “Ten thous—!”

“Stop, stop!” Stiles interrupts, still laughing his head off as he grabs the rose with his name on it—Stiles, that is, not his real first name. “That brings us to the end of our auction,” he declares, “Thanks everybody for coming, and do enjoy your dates.” He makes his way over to Derek’s side and-and he winks at him! His heart skips a beat in his ribcage and he’s just glad that nobody can hear it. “The cakes are on the house this afternoon so let’s all celebrate a very successful fundraiser!” He playfully slaps Derek on the back and leans in to whisper in his ear, “Thanks man, I owe you big time.”

People cheer and beeline for where some of the non-auctioned staff are serving Stiles’ mouth-wateringly good cakes, but Derek is still struck by what the hell just happened. He came here today to support Stiles and ultimately ask him out on a date like a normal person, but now he’s—he’s charity-zoned himself? Is that even a thing?

“That was so embarrassing for a moment. I mean I wasn’t expecting quadruple figures, but I was kind of hoping there to be at least a little bit of fighting over me.” Derek—well, Derek has a lot to say to Stiles but zero ability to form words at the moment, so there’s that. “I’m just glad I had my loaded bro here ready to save me from what had the potential of being in my top five most awkward moments. You really saved my ass, dude!”

Stiles claps his hand on Derek’s back again and it forces _something_ out of him, at least, “ _Your ass_.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean,” Derek corrects, still blatantly aware of Laura sobbing with laughter while he just stands there making an idiot of himself, “Your ass, uh, it’s… cool.” He shrugs it off like maybe if he acts nonchalant he can fool Stiles into thinking he’s a normal person. “But it needs… something.” Let the higher powers strike him down immediately, because Derek Hale should never, ever have attempted to talk his way through anything. Somehow throwing down five thousand dollars seemed so much easier than whatever the hell this was. Words are hard.

“Right,” Stiles says, and at least he looks amused rather than scandalised. Amused Stiles he can handle.

“Stiles, I just—uh…” he trails off because Stiles slips their hands together, and suddenly his whole system is focussed on just that point of contact.

“Words are hard,” Stiles decides, and Derek is so glad that Stiles is on the same page on that front, because that could’ve been a serious train wreck there. “But for the record, I think your ass is cool too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dunno where this came from, or why it was a rare G-rated fic of mine, but hey, here we are.


End file.
